I suggest you first read this tutorial Heroglyph, the typewriter effect. In Step 1 we explain how to open the plugin in Studio and create a new project. Other steps needed to understand this current tutorial are also described.

Step 1 : Simple handwriting

We will use one of the travel route functions of Heroglyph, trail painting :

And more specifically trail animation :

Explaining how it's done is more complicated than actually doing it : put the mouse on the blinking dot, press and hold the left mouse button to draw a character. To create a straight-line press Shift at the same time and if you want to pause your drawing in order to reposition the mouse at another point, press Ctrl.

Are you afraid you might not remember everything? "Mister" proDAD explains it clearly :

If you don't like the location of the flashing dot you can move it by clicking on one of the arrows that surround it and position it elsewhere :

Let's go! This is how I wrote "hello" with my beautiful writing :

You can change its position in the same way as the flashing dot :

If your drawing doesn't seem smooth enough, or if you tried this tutorial during an earthquake, applying a bit of Round and harmonize path should improve things :

Now, here is what happens to my "hello" :

Step 2 : Some fine tuning

Let's add a few improvements to our text.

First we will insert a pause so that the text does not disappear too quickly:

For example, a 2 seconds pause :

The pause appears at the end of our timeline object in the form of a blue area with a small alarm clock:

You can make other changes, for example, the thickness. Go to Start page :

Then Edit design :

And at the bottom in Specialisation, Bold tab, move the cursor to 10 :

Here is the result :

You can also change the color of the drawing. Go to Edit, Character surface fill :

Press the Color button and in the selection window that opens choose a color and accept it with OK :

This is what happens :

Heroglyph even offers ready-made templates. Start page, Edit design, and choose a template category and a model from the dropdown menu :

Bonus 1

You will soon realize that unless you use a graphics tablet, writing with a mouse is not all that easy. The trick for you is to first use a font that is already on your PC. Preferably a rounded font, or even better, a script type font.

Step 2 of the tutorial Heroglyph, the typewriter effect explains how to enter text, change its size, position, and font. Once this is done return to the beginning of our Step_1 and use the text as a model by drawing on it.

When you are satisfied with the result simply remove the timeline object corresponding to the text by right-clicking on it and pressing Delete (timeline object) :

Step 3 : Adding clipart

You can enhance your title by adding a graphic object that will follow the route drawn, giving the impression that the object is drawing the text.

In Route choose Apply graphic objects and clipart from the art library :

The lucky owners of Creative Pack 2 are provided with a lot of graphic objects such as pens, pencils and other brushes that should gives you plenty to choose from :

Don't panic! If you don't have Creative Pack 2 and you're not happy with the content of your Heroglyph, then read through the rest of the tutorial for a cure for your anxiety.

On the timeline, two objects are now visible :

Self-drawing trail represents the text drawing and trace route the route the clipart will follow. Both should be perfectly synchronized if you want the effect to look realistic.

If, for whatever reason, a gap between the two should appear, right-click on self-drawing trail in the preview window and select Synchronize route to fix the problem easily :

Adding a pause at the end of self-drawing trail allows you to remove the clipart before the drawing ends which I found gives a better visual rendering to the title :

Bonus 2 : Use of personal clipart

As you may have guessed by now, Heroglyph allows you to use other clipart besides those installed by the software or Creative Packs. Supported formats are BMP, GIF, JPEG, PGM, PNG, PPM, PSD, SGI, TGA, TIFF or WMF, animated or not.

To use clipart from your hard drive right-click the clipart in the preview window and select Surface in the dropdown menu :

Then in Type of fillchoose Image/animation and browse to the file in Image with Select file... :

If the image contains areas of transparency, ie; an alpha channel, Heroglyph should automatically detect it and adjust the settings so everything is displayed correctly.

If it does not for some reason, you would have to modify some parameters including Show (the most likely option being RVB + alpha of the image) and Use to determine which layer should be transparent (the most likely option being white covers) .

Finally you can adjust the transparency of your clipart with Surface Opacity.

Result :

If you read and understood everything you should be able to achieve, for example, this :

Well, almost ! Because I have not yet told you everything: a graphic object can be outside of the display area of your video. And that can sometimes be useful.

Hey, Mom ! You know what ? I learned something to the famous Mark.A good thing I should write on my resume. ;o)

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